


my happiness bites the plum of your mouth

by arsonist



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Poetry, Post-Canon, Really pointless fluff, Simon is a huge nerd, i'm literally composed of fluff and sap instead of flesh and bones i swear, more pretentious bullshit probably but a different kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arsonist/pseuds/arsonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren’s gentle amusement is a grin slow forming on his face, almost a smirk. He puts his drawing aside. “Simon, are you a poetry nerd?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	my happiness bites the plum of your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this??? was really spontaneous??? idk whats happening to me, i'm writing things, wtf has this show done to me??
> 
> this is just a really simple, silly self-indulgent thing; its not super polished or serious. i really just wanted simon to nerd out about poetry because we can assume he's into it and i love it, so. haha P: and then i pictured him reciting 'every day you play' to kieren and kinda died a bit, probably. so here u go
> 
> i'd like to formally apologize to pablo neruda for hacking away entire bits of his beautiful poem, i'm really so so sorry (it feels like such a crime tbh). i felt like having the entire thing there would be weird and too long, but i really wanted the beginning and the end in there, so i ended up removing a few stanzas from the middle... please forgive me </3 :'( the title is from one of the stanzas i removed, to compensate.
> 
> you can read both poems in full [here](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175776%20) and [here](https://craftyodysseus.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/every-day-you-play-pablo-neruda/%20).
> 
> i'd also like to thank [dimly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Parapines/pseuds/adimlytwistingplanet) for betaing this and also for somehow successfully convincing me it doesn't completely suck.

There’s a comfortable silence in the sitting room at the bungalow; Kieren is absorbed in his sketching, curled up on one maroon sofa, the sound of graphite scratching sketchbook paper the only thing cutting through the cozy lull. Simon is sprawled on the other sofa with a thick book in his hands, but he hasn't been focusing on it for a while now. Instead he drums his fingers against his thigh, considers Kieren.

“Hey,” he eventually says, softly, as if to avoid disturbing the pleasant but fragile atmosphere of the room. Kieren finishes a few more lines before looking up at him, big pearly eyes lightly tinged with curiosity. Simon hesitates, but only slightly.

“You mentioned the day we met that you'd have wanted a poem as your epitaph.”

“Yeah, but I never had one picked out,” Kieren turns his eyes back to the page in his lap, contemplates the whole composition now that his attention has been called away from the details. “I wasn't exactly planning on being buried.”

“Oh no, I know,” he sits up and closes his book, finally, fingers stuttering against the cover now. “I was just wondering. About what kind of poetry you liked.”

“Oh,” Kieren pauses, and looks up at Simon again. “Well, I never really read that much poetry, really. Mostly things we read in school, I think. I think I remember one, though...” he turns his eyes to the ceiling and concentrates, trying to remember; closes them. He speaks slowly when he does, willing the words to come to him.

“From childhood's hour I have not been  
As others were -- I have not seen  
As others saw -- I could not bring...”

Simon smiles slightly as he recognizes it. Putting his book down, he stands up from his place in the sofa and joins Kieren in reciting the poem, his voice more confident than his, having less trouble remembering the verses. Kieren’s eyes open again when he hears Simon’s voice mix with his, and he lets his own fade and Simon take over as he walks to him.

“...My passions from a common spring --  
From the same source I have not taken  
My sorrow -- I could not awaken  
My heart to joy at the same tone --  
And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone --...”

Simon sits next to him, but doesn’t finish the poem. He looks at Kieren, at this kind boy who’d identified with such lonely words, and feels a swell of empathy. Those words, that kind of pain, he could easily identify with as well.

“That’s Poe. I’m surprised you read that one in school, and not something like ‘The Raven’.”

“We didn't, I found that one myself,” Kieren’s gentle amusement is a grin slow forming on his face, almost a smirk. He puts his drawing aside. “Simon, are you a poetry nerd?”

Simon’s eyes widen slightly, but his voice is calm. “What? No, I just...” he pauses and squints, thinking. He slowly sways his head from side to side, conceding, lips pressed together in slight embarrassment. “I might be, a bit, yes.”

Kieren only chuckles at his dork of a boyfriend, presses his lips to his briefly with a hand on the slope of his shoulder. “And what's _your_ favorite poem, nerd? I’m assuming not the one you recited at the graveyard?”

“No. And I’m not sure I have a favorite, actually,” Simon’s eyes examine Kieren’s bare, pale face tenderly, with fondness. “There are too many I love.”

“That’s fair, I guess,” Kieren purses his lips, fingers toying with the thick wool of the collar of Simon’s jumper. “Do you know any you could recite to me?”

Simon’s eyebrows raise for a moment, as if to say, ‘Do I _know_ any? Who do you take me for?’, but then he's thinking, gaze low, rummaging through his half-dead brain for words to recite, something worthy of Kieren’s ears. His eyes flash with something when he makes up his mind, but it’s gone in a second. He clears his throat and turns warm milky eyes back to Kieren, and doesn’t look away anymore.

“Every day you play with the light of the universe.  
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.  
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly  
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.  
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.  
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?  
Oh, let me remember you as you were before you existed.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,  
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.  
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,  
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.  
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.  
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.  
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,  
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.  
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

When he finishes, Kieren blinks a few times, flustered. He bites his lip; he’s sure he’d be blushing if he could. “Oh. Wow. That’s-- that's gorgeous. And very... Romantic.”

Simon, feeling a little bashful now that he's finished, lowers his eyes again briefly, a flash of dark eyelashes in high contrast against ashen cheeks. “’S Neruda, he's often like that.”

Kieren responds with a gentle kiss, a little longer than the one before. The hand on Simon’s shoulder moves to the back of his neck, and the other rises to join it there. They part, and he rests his forehead against Simon’s for a brief moment, pulls away to look at him. “It’s beautiful. I’m kind of amazed you can remember all this.”

Simon’s own hand comes up to brush a lock of hair from Kieren’s face. “I forgot a few parts, it's a bit longer than that.”

Kieren shakes his head. “Still,” he pauses, considering; looks at Simon's mouth. “What was that last line again, ‘I want to do with you...’”

“‘...What spring does with the cherry trees.’”

“Yeah, that,” he says, trying hard not to smile through it, and failing miserably. “I’m not quite sure I got what he meant by that.”

Simon’s eyebrows raise, and he’s smiling too, doesn’t try to stop it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Maybe you should, you know. Explain it to me. Or show me, maybe. Very thoroughly, to make sure I get it.”

Simon kisses him then, bites Kieren’s lip lightly, and speaks smiling, a mumble against his mouth. “I can do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> recite neruda to him, a+ seduction tactic simon. jfc


End file.
